It doesn't bother me if some guy wants to present himself as woman. Anything that gets guys in touch with their girlie side and away from football is probably a good thing.
It's not as if I haven't cyber-cross-dressed as a bloke occasionally, to keep a lower profile. Being a woman involved in Internet erotica can be a bit wearying.
But then that's the advantage of being a modern woman: I can wear skirts, I can wear trousers, no one really minds. But just try being a bloke in a skirt! Scotsmen don't carry those little daggers for nothing. Yet, it's the men who usually get most het up about this sort of thing.
So if someone emails you and says they're a foxy chick who liked to pour herself out of a cocktail dress for your pleasure, how do you know they're not a callous-handed Canadian lumberjack with a taste for plaid shirts and bobblely ski hats, living in a shack in the Yukon (not that many of my best correspondents aren't Canadian - it's just a factious example, no offence)?
Well obviously, I can't help you with the plaid shirts and ski hat thing (though the hats are called toques, apparently - though I still don't think that makes them sound very butch; still when it's damn cold, who cares?). But my newspaper, The Guardian (code: liberal lefty with Socialist tendencies, but fundamentally a Bourgeois accommodationist - damn you can tell a lot from someone's newspaper) - had this simple (well, simplistic really) test.
If you answer 'Yes' to more than two of these questions, than your email sender is a bloke:
Of course, if your answer is 'no' to all of them, it might still be a chap pretending to be a woman. But at least it's a sophisticated, inclusive and interesting one who doesn't scratch his balls while he talks to your tits, and so should be prized.
Or as one of my correspondents said, "About the playing a girl bit ... I have always seriously despised people who do this. And often wondered WHY people do it. It is indeed misleading and a very cheap way to get people to talk to you. But there is one thing I can tell you also. It is great fun. ;p"
Actually, I find question 1. above a bit fishy. I mean, fucking hell, women can swear too, it's not an advanced skill – oh, I see, that's the point – women prefer to use advanced skills. Still I'd like to also add of the email:
Of course, some men make better women than some women - and vice versa. Life is rich, life is complex. So if you like the person you're emailing, does their 'real' gender really matter?